Effects of friction heating on a half space involving ellipsoidal inclusions with non-uniform eigentemperature gradients

Performance of material containing inhomogeneities/inclusions is severely affected by frictional heat resulting from contact behaviors between two mechanical components. An effective method for dealing with thermal field of a half space with distributed non-uniform ellipsoidal inclusions subjected to frictional heating load was proposed in the current investigation, which can be simplified to handle problems of uniform ellipsoidal inclusion and extended to deal with inhomogeneity problems. Two categories of non-uniform inclusions with Gaussian and exponential eigentemperature gradients are modeled. Temperature rise and thermal stress are analogously solved via the equivalent inclusion method (EIM). Results obtained by the proposed method totally correspond to those of the benchmarks. Parametric studies on eigentermperature gradient distribution and thermal field of a half space involving a non-uniform spherical inclusion are carried out. Surface convection effect is further taken into consideration to extend the application scope of the proposed method, and the influence of surface heat-transfer coefficients on the thermal field of a semi-infinite medium is explored.